Welcome Back
by Immoroita
Summary: Eight years is a long time. People change, but feelings remain the same... A short Nick/Maya.


_Who would have thought, that after all this time, I'd return to this place?_

As a couple of black clouds drifted lazily over the dim sky, the watch on Phoenix Wright's wrist chimed 12 PM. He cast his eyes around, taking in the familiar sights: thatch-roofed houses, Kurain Boulder, grand Fey Manor.

Eight years was a long, long time. Phoenix had decided to take a vacation and left Trucy and Apollo to look after the Wright Anything Agency.

He stood opposite the schoolhouse, avoiding the stares of curious young eyes that glanced out of the window to see the lone man in the middle of their nice schoolyard. Although Phoenix couldn't see her, he knew that Maya was probably at the front, blocked from his view by a door.

For a moment, he was overcome with a desire to charge and break down the door as he had done once before in Fey Manor.

"Good morning, children! Nice to see you again!"

The familiar voice rang out cheerfully, faint and tinny to the man in the gray sweater. It wasn't Maya's voice, though.

"Good _moo-oorning, _Mystic Miiaaaaa," the children chorused, and finally, for the first time in a long time, Phoenix saw Mia's familiar figure walking down the aisle. Although it was Mia in the body, it was hard to recognize the person channeling her. Maya's style had changed very much since the last time Phoenix had seen her, be it voluntarily or not, and her robes were the garb of the Master of the Kurain School of Channeling, instead of her loose, cheerful purple dress. Her long black hair was tied back in a neat, stern bun.

"Now, Gemma, don't tease Millie about her braids. It's not nice. No, Millie, I think your braids are _very _nice. I just - Penny, whatever are you talking about? All the men are in town right now. What? A man in the middle of the schoolyard?"

Phoenix started as the figure turned abruptly, but before he could turn tail and flee Mia spotted him, and confusion lit her eyes for a moment as she realized that this man was most definitely _not _from Kurain Village. She opened the window and called out, "Who are you?"

The former lawyer felt a pang of regret at his old mentor not recognizing him, and, with a nervous chuckle, waved at her. "It's me, Mia!"

A wide smile spread over Mia's face, warm and comforting to Phoenix, and she beckoned to him. "Come in, come in! Looks like rain, anyway, so you'd best be getting inside here. Someone desperately wants to see you, too."

Briefly the black-haired man wondered who it could be, and accepted Mia's invitation by way of rushing inside just as the first drops of rain began to fall. As soon as he stepped in, more than twenty pairs of eyes turned to him, and there was an excited squeal that he knew all too well.

"Mr. Nick!"

A teenage girl with pink robes and brown hair raced over. "Pearls!" he exclaimed, catching and hugging her as she threw herself at him forcefully.

"I missed you!" said she, her eyes sparkling.

"Me too," he said, and smiled fondly. Pearl hadn't changed a bit in voice and manner, with the same shy demeanor that gave way to a hopeless romantic the moment she saw him.

"I bet Mystic Maya missed you tooooo~," the girl teased in a singsong voice.

_Doesn't miss a beat, does she? _thought Phoenix, feeling more than a little embarrassed.

"Yes, well!" Mia said quickly, as if she sensed her former apprentice's bashfulness. "We can talk later about old times, can't we?" she added, shutting the door firmly and shooing Pearl back to a chair in the corner. "Pearl is Maya's teaching assistant," she told Phoenix, who was rubbing the back of his head and feeling very warm in the face. "She's a channeling prodigy, so she graduated from the school two years ahead of herself!"

Pearl ducked her head, and whispered: "No, don't say that, Mystic Mia…"

"So, um, why are you teaching instead of Maya?" the ex-lawyer said quickly, to divert the attention from Pearl, who plainly still didn't like attention despite her being a teaching assistant.

"Maya takes a day off a month," Mia said offhandedly. "I'm called in to teach instead, to make up for what I've lost." Regret edged her voice as she continued.

"But where Mystic Maya goes, none of us knows. _Nobody _knows, not even her. Which brings me to my next point, children!" she added, addressing the room at large and snapping some people out of their trances (which consisted of staring in wonder at Phoenix's strange attire). "_Where do we go when we channel spirits? _That's the thing, hmm? Actually, it's something that one of my ancestors, Mara Fey, decided to investigate once… would you like to hear how it was? Well…"

After a couple more lines of the story, Phoenix sat down tentatively in a chair and zoned out. It was nice to be back, he decided, as Mia recounted how Mara Fey nearly lost her life by way of channeling a spirit at the same time as trying to stay the dominant soul in the body. _But I wish everyone would stop staring at me!_

Three stories and a hearty folk song later, the girls were sent home in twos and threes, shivering as the rain soaked them despite their umbrellas. Pearl held an umbrella that she shared with Phoenix as she hurried to see him off. He quickly relieved her of it as she had grown barely fifteen centimeters since the last time he'd seen her.

"These things are positively flimsy," Phoenix remarked as rain pounded down on them. Pearl giggled. "I'll go on ahead and get you a train ticket," she said, and took the umbrella from him pointedly. She gestured at a clump of trees and winked at him.

"No doubt those trees are better cover than this umbrella," the tall man said, choosing to wisely ignore her hint, and headed over as Pearl raced through the rain in the general direction of the train station.

Phoenix milled around in the shade of the trees, his heart pounding in his chest, as he waited for Mia to vacate Maya's body and for her to come out of the school.

During the eternity of ten minutes, Phoenix's mind was a complete blank. There was absolutely nothing he could think of to say.

'Hey, Maya! Sorry for leaving you all those years ago, but let bygones be bygones, eh?'

_Jeez, Phoenix. Real smooth._

Suddenly the lock on the door clicked, and the man standing under the shade of the trees looked up sharply. Maya lingered on the stoop of the schoolhouse, her face turned to the side, her eyes downcast. Her profile was strikingly familiar, if her attire and style wasn't, and she turned as though there was a heavy weight on her shoulders. In her arms she held a pile of spirit channeling robes. On some were stamped the word "Spare"_. _On others, "Demonstration". She painstakingly raised an umbrella above her head, looking weighed down and older than she ought to have looked. Her eyes raised and they alighted upon Phoenix, the lone figure in the middle of a silent, cold schoolyard.

Brown met gray for a single, heart-stopping moment, and a mind-numbing, aching joy coursed through Phoenix's body, only to be replaced by pain and regret as confusion crossed the woman's face. She was, quite obviously, the assistant who had helped him through many cases and who had been his faithful companion through his years as a defense attorney. How could she not recognize him?

He, only managing to think of one course of action, raised his hand up to his head and slipped the blue beanie off his head.

Immediately an expression that held nothing short of pure ecstasy and joy appeared on Maya's face, and she cried in a voice that was filled with nothing but pathetic love and yearning: "Nick! Is that really you? _Nick!"_

For an instant she was seventeen again, beaming at him as he got her acquitted of her first murder charge, and suddenly Maya was racing towards him, flinging aside the robes in her arms and the umbrella carelessly. They landed on the muddy ground in a wet, sodden mess.

She flung herself into his arms as she sobbed into his shoulder, holding him so tightly that he thought she'd never let him go. In that moment, all was said and done as the two stood, intertwined, the rain pouring down on both of them, and in that moment, both saw a glimpse of a hopeful future.

"Nick," Maya said quietly, her face still buried into his shoulder. "I knew you'd come back!"

They stood for a long while, immersed in each other, before Phoenix finally said something that was more adequate than the most elegant marriage proposal.

"Maya?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's go get a burger."

"… okay. But you're paying."

"Sure thing, Maya. Sure thing."

**FIN.**


End file.
